Before the 2025 school year begins late next summer, Goodwin University plans to build its 90,000-square-foot NextTech Academy to serve freshmen high school students interested in industry and technology.
NextTech will join Goodwin’s system of magnet schools and further enlarge its campus along the Connecticut River, and will ultimately serve just under 290 students from ninth through 12th grade.
The $85 million building will include 6,000 square feet of industrial shops with equipment, technical classrooms and computer labs along with a cybersecurity war room.
A unique feature will be an astronaut training center: The school plans a partnership with the Victorian Space Science Education Centre in Australia, and Goodwin students will get to apply what they’ve learned about technical science in a virtual mission to Mars, according to Superintendent Salvatore Menzo.
Most of the school will be devoted to relatively traditional careers, with a heavy emphasis on high-tech manufacturing that’s in high demand by aerospace businesses along the I-91 corridor as well as other industrial employers around the state.
“The intent is to provide a leading-edge technical magnet program. It will partner with local industry to really get its students not only the soft skills they need for the world of work, but to really train them on the actual machines that some of our state’s leading innovators are using,” architect Michael Scott told town officials this summer.
Floor plans provided to the town’s planning and zoning commission show space for computer labs, CNC lathes, sheet metal work, 3D printing, welding and a work area for drones, automation and robotics.
The school will have a large gym, and outdoor field, an auditorium and band room along with other facilities.
Menzo said the curriculum will focus on design thinking, work-based learning, personal finance and six key workplace skills: critical thinking, time management, communication, presentation skills, team work and problem solving. There will be shop space for automation, production/fabrication, Smart Factory 4.0 and system integration.
A few topics in the Smart Factory 4.0 section will be data analytics, KPI-metrics, virtual processes, predictive maintenance, AI and cybersecurity.
Goodwin administrators envision classes of 18 to 20, with about 75 students in each grade. The program will meet the state’s graduation requirements, and Goodwin Connecticut State Graduation Requirements while offering them a unique intends to coordinate paid internships and apprenticeships.
The school will be constructed along Pent Road and when completed will form a complex of high school programs including Goodwin’s nearby Pathways High school as well as the educational facilities in Building 1 and Building 2.
Goodwin anticipates that the vast majority of students will arrive by bus or be dropped off by parents. The magnet school will serve surrounding towns, and Goodwin’s experience with Pathways is that most students get rides or take the bus rather than drive themselves. So even though the new school will be built on the site of Pathways’ parking lot, Goodwin told the town it is confident there will be enough parking with the 101 new spaces it has proposed.
